Yes it is player relations.... and Dave has nothing short of great with it. I am sure next time he will wait by his computer day and night just to wait for your all important email since it is clear you are a freeroll troll and have no reason to deposit on his site.

Hi Everyone, sorry for the late reply here, wasn't avoiding anything, just up now:
1. True story, my second new born son just came home from the hospital yesterday, and it was bit more overwhelming than I had expected in terms of adjusting, so ended up passing out after everything was sorted.
2. Got some further updates from Merge on general inquiry, I need a few minutes to sort out what it means for Hero and the players.
3. Give me within in the next 30 mins to start getting to the posts and PM.

Cheers,
David

Definitely agree. Was expecting a flipfest so told my in-laws I could be at dinner by 6:30, was totally not the case. Ended up building my stack to 12k with 400 players left, went to dinner, turned back on the computer and there was 301 players left and I had 9k. Sweet! Whether I actually see some or all of that hundo in my bank account, doesn't really matter since I'm happy to be playing again.

It was actually 30k cash and 30k bonus, so 300 winners of 100+100. Even though I'm a decent volume player I don't really expect to get the bonus 100 since if you have RB you get VIP points at only 20% of the normal rate.

Actually I've found support to be BETTER than Pokerstars so far. And I'm definitely not a shill. Why would you want a password to a restricted tourney auto-delivered to many more people, where it benefits you greatly to have less players?

Congrats on your 2nd child Dave!

I am hoping you are deciding on several Hero Poker "exclusive" tournaments in the near future. I have noticed several first time deposit freerolls during the week as well as a couple of Guar. ones too. Any special tournaments planned soon?

Congratulations! I wish you and your family the best!!!

If you really don't care, you can play play money on stars and Tilt still.



You misunderstood my post. I didn't say the password should be delivered to anyone. They wanted it restricted to US Players. The E-Mail I was talking about was to inform new players that due to new players support would be slow. I followed the instructions exactly how they told me to to get the password. It didn't work.

Loved the site, loved the software, but the support was lacking. If I was a startup today, that's not how I would handle it. But it's all water under the bridge now.

Congrats on the baby Dave!

Hi guys, I finally caught up with Pm and emails, and right when I'm going to start with these post, my wife needs to feed the 2nd son and my 1st son is trying to prevent the love being shared by mommy, so I need to take the 2nd one out until the feeding is done. This is not a lie, apologies, first time experiencing such jealous love, so I will get to these in a bit, but PM have been looked afterwards and thanks for the congrats!

Australian law makes it illegal for an Australian company to run an off-shore gaming site (not sure if you can with an official license) and it's my understanding that Merge itself is an Australian company so they ban any aussie's from playing.

From what David has said, Hero has set up its corporate structure so as to not be in violation of this law (likely through having no Australian ownership in Hero) which will allow aussies to play there once everything is in place.

I'm not sure how Hero having its paperwork sorted gets around the Merge ownership problem but am willing to trust in what David says at this stage and see how it all falls out.

Hi Everyone, this has been also been concluded via PM, and I'll address this now, I haven't read all the post up to this point, but I think I'm got the gist of it, so some explanations.

1. First, I don't want to make any excuses, as individuals we can make excuses and just forget about them, as businesses, we need to take them all seriously because it can point to something more under the surface and we can always do better.

2. My rational for the 'email to marketing@heropoker.com' rather than just a PM here or support was that I really did want to respond as much as possible and wanted to double check things myself.
Possibly unrealistic, as:
1. players will instinctively email support and the support supervisor even question my logic on this, but we've agreed that moving forward I will get support more involved in this (I simply also didn't want to add to support's load at this time). Also since I am on 2p2, then of course players will naturally think to PM here.

2. the reasons beyond that are that I was super paranoid about the promotion getting messed up by scammers. This has happened before at Stars and even at some earlier promotional events by Hero when 15 mainland Chinese accounts invaded a P5s event, won 2 places and then proceeded to chip dump and then search out all our other promotions and messed with them all (I banned them all). So, while I've gotten much flack for doing a US only promotion, if I was going to do it I wanted to do it properly.

3. I've gotten a lot of feedback and one player was upset that there were so many players sitting out and she was absolutely correct. I put the blind structure at 15min as a symbolic gesture but also to induce some fun no pressure play at the beginning, but when 4 of the 6 people are sitting out, well that just sucks. So I won't be having such a blind structure moving forward and won't be announcing such a promotion so early in advance again. But I did take her criticism very seriously and did not dismiss it as some type of bad beat comment, because she did take the time to sign up, to play and it was her afternoon that I was hosting here at Hero.

4. Another player had emailed me early, and I had emailed twice back with the Password and then he sent me another email saying he was done with the site because I hadn't sent him the pw and he had waited a considerable amount of time. But I had sent him now the pw 3 times and then realized that I was an idiot because just because I could receive them didn't necessary mean that he could receive them from our corporate address. But that was frustrating to say the least, so I called him up, apologized in person, resent an apology through a personal gmail account and it got through to him and gave him some comps as compensation for my thoughtlessness. But my point is, I had assumed that he got them when he clearly didn't and I did the most insane thing and just did the same response again expecting a different result.

5. I am handling this part of the boutique aspect of customer service myself, of course we will ramp up, but I want to explain why. As a executive, my job is to identify what is the most important key element for our value, and as a network site, it isn't in the software or promotions, but in communication. Also, while I understood what is customer service, I've never been a customer service representative. I know the level of service that I want and I expect and I'd have to say my expectations are high and so I try to simply provide that at that level. Not that I've been trained in doing this, but I've taken it very seriously and I literally sleep with my iphone by my head and if I see that my inbox is over 5 emails, I stop my nap, wash my face, mircowave an instant coffee and get to it. Now, again, this will not be sustainable, as I think my children will see to that, and right now I'm not taking any flights- I've cancelled them all from 1week before the time my wife gave birth on May1. But normally I fly every week between Macau and Korea to do live casino game consulting. But, I wanted to fully understand this aspect of our business first and then to personally train a few people who will have the same level of authority to simply make a decision and run with it and who won't end up upsetting a long time loyal customer because they felt personally offended by a player's request whereas, minus people's emotional reactions, there is a good reason for any comment. When customer service will be our prime point of differentiation, I don't feel this is minus on the opportunity cost front, rather, it is honestly the only thing we can be doing to give value.

We just launched Feb 23, 2011 at the Aussie Millions, I'm not running this as a start up, but as a boutique, but I am learning many many things and dealing with regs on twoplustwo wasn't something I was expecting on doing for at least a year. But I'm not one to shy either from an new situations and am willing to take all the beats and lumps along the way. Of course it is my hope that I can know Hero players on more than just a customer service level, for whatever it's worth, and while unrealistic, ah hell, launching a new site this year was simply more unrealistic and that hasn't stop me yet. lol.

And thanks for the congrats as well =)

Cheers,
David

I've asked Merge right from the start of our site to simply auto-apply it to all new accounts, as a boutique site again, just want to give the same level of service to all of our members. Its also part of the reason we aren't working with a lot of affiliates because I don't want to do many affiliate only promotions. That beginning said, for those affiliates we do work with they provide a lot of support and their community are more than just random mailers, so I do feel justified in reciprocating in those cases.

Again, if a bonus hasn't been applied, just let me know with your user name and the email you signed up with and I'll sort it out asap.

Dave

I totally agree about not announcing it so far in advance to avoid sit-outs. However, I will say that I loved the structure. Since it was a good value for a freeroll, it was nice to not be forced into a shove-fest. Do whatever you gotta do, though!

P.S. Congrats on the baby!

@genher as well,

Kntestorme, thanks for the summary and reply as well, much appreciated. It is pretty much as you've stated and we're still working it through, slightly longer than anticipated because we are being as transparent with our processors as possible as they also have required it as well considering the entire global environment. We would simply like to be an available option and in this case, Merge network cannot assist us here in the Aussie Market, so in this case they only act as our software provider and customer support and will take no payments on behalf of Aussie Players.
But the process while straightforward again, is considerably more slower than it was previously, I will make an announcement on it shortly in regards to Aussie player sign ups.

Cheers,
David

I've been on donkdown and while a very different type of experience overall, it was a bit traumatic in terms of the lead up to it, so I may consider it after we've launched in the Aussie market. But that is an excellent suggestion, thank you, I know that Terrence has appeared on many such podcasts. Maybe I can provide more of an industry perspective on things.

Cheers,
David

Thanks for adding that David. The bolded parts clear up the questions I had in mind about how you were set up differently enough to take Aussie cash and make a lot of sense, seems you have all your ducks in a row in this regard.

I'll answer this in with as much authority as my position entails, but in this case it is above my pay grade.
It is a private company, Tiger Wealth Management Ltd, and it is privately funded by a consortium of Asia based investors and a private institutional investment fund and is registered in Seychelles (the same place piratebay.org is, I know what it looks like) for tax and regulatory reasons and is licensed under Kanawake via Merge.

I'll forward this to Merge and get a comment on it, but the client should not shut down.
Thanks,
Dave

Ugh, I hadn't realised that about Merge. Given the handling of the AP/UB situation and the issues surrounding Chief Norton I'm afraid I will be hard-pressed now to put any money in :/

Definitely keep that structure. That structure was perfect to allow some play on each level.

Unfortunately, the bonus is tied to the rate of VIP points, so if you're on RB, at Hero you get them cleared at 20% the normal rate, but at other sites, 65% the normal rate. I'm trying to figure out a solution here, and likely after June 1st there will be many changes over all.
Its not a great answer I know, but it is what it is now and I will hope to adjust it soon or make amends in some other area to compensate for it.

Let me rephrase it then. $100 is not enough money for me to worry about. It practically IS play money. But it's fun to be in action again nonetheless.

Yea I would appreciate you looking into making some changes here. Sign up bonuses or the freeroll bonus should be separate from rakeback/vip promotion stuff. Without rakeback I would have to pay $750 in rake to get a $100 bonus and currently I have to pay $3750 in rake to get a $100 bonus. That seems ridiculous. But once again thanks for the quick response.

Yes, quite the indefensible situation; while my due diligence is in Merge Network as an organization and we all know what is at stake regardless of the oversight of who licenses us, but you'd think that there should be some further assurance.

If it helps (which likely it won't) Kahnawake do seem active from what I can tell and did an audit on Merge last month and half ago. I know, doesn't help. But honestly, on that one point, in terms of the assurance, it is again, not something that can be justified at this point. I am also curious to see what plays out for AP/UB situation in terms of the concluding responses by Kahnawake.

Also, why are people complaining about the number of sit-outs? I mean, that's more people you didn't have to worry about, given it was essentially a DoN and the goal was staying alive, not accumulating mass amounts of chips.

Working on it and just ramping up to make sure that the Aussie Launch goes off without too many hiccups because right now we are behind on schedule. But will keep things updated, as I want to get the VIP system out of the way and any admin issues with the June 1st deadline for RB accounts sorted properly, but one thing is that I do want to support our 100k guarantee on the network, so that will probably the first promotions to get started shortly.

And thanks for the congrats again. =)

Cheers,
Dave

Just that it wasn't fun, and I totally get that, not every player is playing for value, and you really need to appreciate those players right?

Cheers,
David